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My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

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Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#31

Post by vonskippy »

Paying bills is stupid. Cleaning house is boring. Going to work EVERY day is stupid. Following rules is stupid. Doing what you're told is stupid. etc etc etc.

Bwahahaha - your kid is screwed. The world is full of arbitrary and down right stupid rules (assuming he ever gets a job, he'll love the tax codes that apply to him, but not to rich people or corporations).

You need to straighten out his young punk ass - and do it now.

Before you say "but what about his mad art/music skillz", I'm afraid I'd need an outside expert to qualify those before I believe they exist. I put my 8 year old daughter's artwork on my office wall and tell her it's beautiful - lucky (for her and me) shes a whiz at science and will get a real job later in life.

No one succeeds in life that can't even manage to get a measly high school degree from a "see spot run" public school.

You are the parent - NOT the twelve year old - what part of that escapes you?

Maybe it's time for private school, where the whole "leave no moron behind" concept doesn't exist. Obviously you and the kids present school system have already failed. Maybe it's not too late for the kid.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#32

Post by Diamons »

Really can't help much but here's my story. I've gone through the majority of high school and college (I'm a junior next semester) without doing much of my homework. I'll do the occasional essay that's worth 20% of your grade or whatever and I won't miss exams, but I won't read (or even buy) the assigned books and responses. I do this because I have much more interesting stuff I like to work on instead of wasting time on homework, but I got along fine. I maintain a steady 3.4 GPA without doing any readings/more than half my homeworks/missing a lot of days of school simply because I feel like it. I value certain things above school.

I say this because I truly believe your son will be fine. People like him are creative and genius way beyond comprehension. They simply refuse to do things the way they are supposed to be done, and that's the sign of someone who's going to be successful one day or another, just not when the definition of success is doing what everyone else is doing how everyone else is doing it.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#33

Post by saraid216 »

brg wrote: post #3

After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done. To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language fo…

I had a high GPA and was both lazy and self-centered. Just, FYI. That's why I have so much useless karma here on HN.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#34

Post by revelation »

olympus wrote: post #27
tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another comment on this thread that I disagreed with but found sensible, until the very end, where it recommends that adults hit children to make them do things.

tptacek, I'm sure you have a compelling viewpoint both as someone who has to manage an entire company and as someone who is older and wiser than I am (I'm not sure if you have kids of your own). Would you care to expand on why you don't think spanking is an acceptable form of discipline? To clarify, I only recommend open palm spanking. Not switches/lashes/paddles/belts. It doesn't bruise, only stings for a few second…

Apart from the fact that it is illegal: your kid will resent you. Sure, they might grow up all fine, but do not think that resentment will ever go away.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#35

Post by tptacek »

olympus wrote: post #27
tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another comment on this thread that I disagreed with but found sensible, until the very end, where it recommends that adults hit children to make them do things.

tptacek, I'm sure you have a compelling viewpoint both as someone who has to manage an entire company and as someone who is older and wiser than I am (I'm not sure if you have kids of your own). Would you care to expand on why you don't think spanking is an acceptable form of discipline? To clarify, I only recommend open palm spanking. Not switches/lashes/paddles/belts. It doesn't bruise, only stings for a few second…

Adults should not hit children.

(Also: Dave and Jeremy do more managing than I do, although I have more impact on hiring than they do; We have two kids, 13 and 11 about to be 14 and 12.)

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#38

Post by pyre »

olympus wrote: post #18

There's a story from Gene Woolsey that I had to read my senior year in college (I was an Ops Research major, and Gene Woolsey is a pretty big deal in that field). The story went something like this: A group of students had just finished a big research project and were told to present a one page executive summary that outlined their work, results, and conclusions. They couldn't quite get it to fit on one page, so thei…

  | If you want to use a different kind of paper, ask
  | your teacher first
To be fair, it's a math class. The size of paper used is the stupidest thing to grade someone on. It would be like the physics world throwing out Einstein's conclusions because he used blue ink instead of black.

I understand the value of 'gaming the system,' but the size the paper used for a math assignment is probably something that didn't get a lot of emphasis when the teacher was assigning it. That said, do you really want to sit back and 'game the system' rather than trying to improve it? Such arbitrary decision-making on the part of the teacher really detracts from their effectiveness. Not only that, it just sounds like something that is teacher-specific. I doubt that the school as a whole is trying to reach for some overriding goal that is served by punishing children for using the wrong sized paper on homework assignments.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#39

Post by greenlander »

brg wrote: post #3

After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done. To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language fo…

I interviewed thousands of new college grads. The guys who I made offers to were almost always guys who did stuff on their own. Right before I retired, the last guy I made a job offer to showed me an app he had written for his iphone that simulated how particles diffuse in a solvent, and his resume showed a link to the code that he wrote.

His GPA was only a 3.5. But I totally got him: he was great because he had a passion for digging into stuff, and not just for jumping through professors' hoops.

In general, the correlation I found between GPA and competence was this:

Below 3.0, something is wrong. This person doesn't get fundamentals: he will write convoluted code and won't get a lot of basic concepts. He either isn't very bright or highly undisciplined or both.

3.0 - 3.5, this guy isn't good at jumping through hoops, but he might be great if he has a passion for programming and has done lots of side work. It's a mixed lot but there are a fair number of diamonds in the rough.

3.5 - 3.9, this is the sweet spot. Lots of great people in this category who did both great and school and also did stuff in their spare time.

3.9 - 4.0, oddly, the quality seemed to go down here a little bit. These are the people who spent all their Friday and Saturday nights studying instead of developing social skills, and didn't really do much besides jump through the professors' hoops and get an A in everything.

A great engineer doesn't just blindly jump through every hoop. In the real world, the amount of work is highly unbounded, and a great engineer will be able to sort through it and figure out what's REALLY important and what's not. And they'll be able to articulate why they think that and negotiate with others. Sometimes, the 4.0 candidates were obsessive-compulsive people weren't grounded in the real world and couldn't think in practical terms.

Obviously, I'm generalize and there are always exceptions. But if you interview thousands of candidates you see the trend.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#40

Post by epochwolf »

revelation wrote: post #34
olympus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tptacek, I'm sure you have a compelling viewpoint both as someone who has to manage an entire company and as someone who is older and wiser than I am (I'm not sure if you have kids of your own). Would you care to expand on why you don't think spanking is an acceptable form of discipline? To clarify, I only recommend open palm spanking. Not switches/lashes/paddles/belts. It doesn't bruise, only stings for a few second…

Apart from the fact that it is illegal: your kid will resent you. Sure, they might grow up all fine, but do not think that resentment will ever go away.

Really? I was spanked in this manner twice (that I remember) and I don't resent my parents.
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